


Teleology

by Gileonnen



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Alcohol as Plausible Excuse to Open Up, Bartenders as Professional Cold Readers, Exos Reading Porn in Public, M/M, Marking and Bruising, Painful Anniversaries, Semi-Public Sex, the search for purpose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-15
Updated: 2019-11-15
Packaged: 2021-01-31 05:30:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21441007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gileonnen/pseuds/Gileonnen
Summary: One night, Zyre Orsa comes to Wu Ming's bar thirsty for purpose. That's not a kind of thirst Wu Ming knows how to slake.
Relationships: The Drifter/Shin Malphur
Kudos: 52





	Teleology

The door swings open, and Zyre Orsa walks in with his hood pulled low.

Wu Ming prides himself on reading his customers in the first few minutes after they step into his bar. He knows who's gonna get rowdy, and he can guess when pretty much to the second. He can see who wants to nurse a flat beer in silence all night and who's looking for someone to pry the lid off their sorrows, and he knows how to ask a question without coming off like he cares about the answer.

But as for Zyre Orsa, now, that one wants to stay a mystery. He blows in now and then with the snows of Vostok in his hair and a lot of glimmer to flash, chatting up Guardians about the latest Crucible match. All charm and cheer, great memory for people's names and faces--but questions have a way of sliding off him unanswered. In almost a year of watching Orsa talk, all Wu Ming can say for sure is that he's a Hunter and that he's real good at shooting people.

Orsa always takes a whiskey soda or vodka on the rocks. No one comes to Wu Ming's for how the liquor tastes, so smart money says Orsa's watering it down to keep his reflexes sharp. Which means he's running from someone, or looking for someone.

Fair enough, but Wu Ming's been a couple of someones that he's not keen for Orsa to find.

It's a quiet night tonight. Couple of regulars bitching about Sparrow drives down at one end of the bar; an Exo subtly thumbing through a dirty mag at the other. Not the kind of night when Wu Ming was expecting to be murdered, but sometimes you can't pick 'em.

Orsa takes a stool. "Whiskey soda," he says, and there's something in his voice that puts Wu Ming's hackles up. It's like hearing a recording playing back, tone-perfect and empty. Any other patron, and Wu Ming would know what questions to ask to get the secrets flowing with the whiskey.

He doesn't want to pry. Hell, he doesn't want to _pour_.

As the ice clinks into the tumbler, though, Wu Ming says conversationally, "You want to talk about it?"

"Nope," says Orsa flatly. He takes his drink and downs it in one long gulp, so fast that the ice cascades down around his lips. "Keep 'em coming."

Around the third drink, Orsa lets the hood fall around his shoulders. His careful curls are straggling around his chin, and his eyes are bloodshot, bruise-rimmed. He looks fucked up in a way that has nothing to do with the Crucible.

Whatever Orsa's been looking for, Wu Ming thinks he must've found it.

The pair at one end of the bar settle their tab and leave still scrapping over coolant systems. By Orsa's fifth drink, the Exo finishes her titty mag and tucks her datapad away. She sips her acetone mixer a while, then drops a heap of glimmer shards on the bar and weaves her way to the door.

Then it's just Orsa and Wu Ming and the silence growing between them, the ice resettling in the glass and the shotgun under the bar.

Orsa holds his tumbler up to the light. By now, Wu Ming's pouring him more soda than whiskey; there's only enough in the glass to wash it amber. "Do you know the word 'telos?'" Orsa asks.

Wu Ming rubs a rag over a stain on the bar. It hasn't come clean in a decade, but it makes a nice excuse not to meet someone's eyes. "Can't say we're familiar."

Orsa drinks, then pushes his glass away. "It means an end. A purpose, or the end of a story. The end to which all things bend, as though it's a weight on the fabric of the universe."

He looks like he's gathering his thoughts, so Wu Ming waits.

"But things ... orbit, sometimes. Another year goes by, and you're back where you started. No closer. No further. At least, not on any scale that matters. The universe bends, but you keep circling--wondering what the fuck any of it was for, if the end isn't any closer than it was a year ago--"

He sits back with the toe of his shoe braced against the bar, pushing his stool back onto two legs. He looks worn out.

Wu Ming pours himself a drink just to have something to do with his hands. He knocks back a shot--barely tastes anything but burning--and pours another. "You keep coming here looking for the last guy. The one you can shoot and say, 'That's it; I got him; I'm done.'"

Orsa looks down and away, which means _Yes._

"But you're never gonna find the last guy. Say you put some Guardians down, permanent-like. Hell, let's even say they deserved it--Guardians get up to some crazy shit, but I don't know, maybe they did something extra bad. Then some Titan gets it into her head to flirt with Sword Logic, or a warlock tangos too close to the Darkness, and it starts all over again. Nothing ends."

"It has to end," says Orsa, "or what's the _point_ of it all?" His voice catches, somewhere between rage and tears; Wu Ming's seen it break both ways, and Orsa's riding the jagged line between them.

He seems to want a real answer, and Wu Ming's in no way able to give him one.

Wu Ming sighs. "You're not gonna get the meaning of life from a bartender at closing time," he says eventually. "Maybe there isn't a point. Maybe the point is, I don't know, friendship or love or some shit like that. Or maybe the point's just to take what you can and get out before someone puts a bullet in your Ghost."

Orsa snorts. "Cynical."

"These are dangerous times. Gotta watch your back."

Orsa's fingertip traces the rim of his glass. The sides are glossy with condensation. "Do you believe it?"

"There's a shotgun under the bar, if you want me to swear on something."

"Not that. I mean--take what you can, and get out. Fuck everyone else."

_I tried that,_ Wu Ming wants to say. _But you can't get far enough out to get away from yourself._ Instead, he downs his second shot and says, "If I fucked everyone else, I wouldn't have time to tend bar."

Orsa smirks. His eyes are dark, heavy-lidded in a way that smooths out the dark shadows. For just a moment, Wu Ming sees a little of that old alluring mask. "What about just me?"

The burn at the back of his throat nearly makes Wu Ming choke. He swallows it down and asks, "You offering?"

When Orsa leans in, his breath is hot and sweet against Wu Ming's lips. "I'm offering."

The kiss tastes of whiskey and skin, ice and blood; Orsa catches Wu Ming's skull in both his palms and drags the kiss dizzyingly deep. Wu Ming's teeth scrape Orsa's lip, and the sound he makes is so raw and eager that it sends a spike of wanting straight to Wu Ming's cock.

This is a distraction, sure, but not only a distraction. It's something Orsa couldn't let himself want if there weren't some other gambit going on in the background, some other wheels within wheels that turn when Orsa turns his crank. And when Wu Ming fists his hand in his hair and drags Orsa's head back to bite bruises into his smooth, pale neck, there can be no doubt it's turning his crank.

If Wu Ming had ever thought about fucking Orsa, he'd have expected it to be a fight--knees jammed between thighs, clothes ripped off. He's not ready for how Orsa melts under his hands. He's not ready for the low, feeling _Fuck_ when he sucks a deep red mark into the skin beneath Orsa's jaw, or how Orsa strains up into the hand in his hair.

"Get over here," Wu Ming mouths against his ear, and Orsa scrambles across the bar like he was waiting for permission. Their glasses go flying; the tumbler shatters in a rain of icemelt, and Wu Ming can't make himself care because Orsa's skinning his pants down to wrap his lips around Wu Ming's cock.

His mouth is hot and wet and tight as a fist. His lips strain, stretched so tight that they go white at the corners, but he swallows down Wu Ming in a single long, smooth thrust, and it's the most incredible feeling Wu Ming's ever had on his dick. Orsa looks up at him with that searching look, that ends-of-the-universe look; his eyelashes sweep long and dark across his cheeks.

For a moment, two shots drunk and fucking deep, eager groans out of Orsa's throat, Wu Ming wonders whether this might not be the answer Orsa's been seeking.

After, they turn the _Closed_ sign around, lock the doors, close the blinds. Set chairs seat-down on tables while Wu Ming mops up the spills and the broken glass.

In the dim light of closing, Orsa leans half-naked against the bar, tracing his fingertips over his ragged neck. His eyes are fixed on something far away. Whatever he's looking at, it's nothing Wu Ming can see. Maybe nothing Orsa can see.

Wu Ming sets his mop aside and sidles up to Orsa. His hip grazes Orsa's; they shift together, realigning until they touch from rib to thigh. "So," he says. "Wanna pick up where we left off?"

Orsa grins, fierce and sharp and bright with something better than purpose. "You bet your ass I do. I'm not finished yet."


End file.
